I've been playing around with Sound Forge Pro 10 for a few days. Basically, I've recorded my girlfriend's vocals (she was listening to the music via headphones from a laptop), and I'm trying to line up the backing music to her vocals. Is there any way that I can simple drag the wave along (instead of highlighting sections of it)? Is there a key I can hold so that my entire selection (or the entire channel) will move from left to right so that I can get them lined up?

At the moment I'm just adding silence to the start but it's so tedious and time consuming that it's driving me mad.

If not, is this achievable in Audacity? Would my life be made easier going down that route?

3 Answers
3

There are two "modes" you can use to interact with a track. You can click and drag to highlight a section of the track, or you can double-click and select the entire track. What I often have trouble with is that there's a sweet spot right around the line that separates the two tracks. If you double click in that sweet spot, BOTH tracks highlight. If you miss, only one track highlights. It seems to respond better when I click fast. It's almost as if the delay where SF determines if you're clicking or double-clicking is so miniscule that humans can't do it. There may be a way to adjust the delay, and SF is the only problem with which I experience double-click vs. click issues, so...just call it a headscratcher and be done with it.

When you select the whole track, the entire thing highlights in blue, not just the selection across which you dragged. If you click a single track, shift-double-click will allow you to add other tracks to that selection. As an old standby, I usually just click anywhere and ctrl-A.

When you've got your track(s) selected, click, hold and move back and forth. You'll notice the cursor turning into a box with an arrow sticking out of it. This is the indicator that you're in the tool that slides audio back and forth. But...one caveat with that. Let's say you have a 5:00 track with 5:00 of sound in it. Where will you move it ~TO~? This is one of the limitations of SF ~prior~ to V9 or V10---I forget which one allows for multitrack recording---and it makes sense. In that version, the length of your "workspace" is defined by the longest stereo track, and you're able to take shorter bits and manipulate them along the timeline. In that regard, the workspace is getting closer to VEGAS functionality, and honestly, I do a lot of my sound mixing in Vegas, exporting a WAV to SF for mastering. But then, I have a video editing background and find Vegas a little more intuitive to use for editing. YMMV.

@filzilla had some excellent ideas about changing to multiple tracks if your version allows for it. That may be the ticket.

On the screen shot I have highlighted the button that must be activated to allow dragging rather than selecting. If you click this button till the icon in the example appears you can then draw the channels from side to side.

at 2:26 on the video above you will see how he engages multiple tracks.
(note he is using a Pro 10 version, while mine is a Studio (home version) 9.

My version as I have learned only supports the use of one pair of tracks so I would consider my answer misleading and awkward. I think you will be better off with dwwilson66 advice on this one. I would delete my answer, but it may have some value later.

"Is there a key I can hold so that my entire selection (or the entire channel) will move from left to right so that I can get them lined up?"

Yes, first make sure you have opened your audio into the timeline, then just normal click the track and move your mouse left or right to move the entire track. You can also change the order of tracks, say you want the bass track on top, simply go to the right margin of the track click and hold and move.

There are a ton of tutorials on Sony Sound Forge on YouTube so I would recommend searching with the key words of the issue you are trying to solve.

Normal clicking the track and moving left and right highlights the selected section of the channel, it doesn't move it along. I just want to line up my vocals with my backing music. Tried searching youtube but nothing on the matter.
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ThePowerJun 26 '12 at 20:47

Sorry about that, I don't have my version of Sound Forge in front of me. I will go home tonight to verify what I was saying and update you tomorrow. I use both Sound Forge and Vegas Pro. In Vegas Pro which I use all the time, what I described works fine. I am wondering if your wave file you are putting on the time line just can't move right, because it may need to trim off some head? You know you can manually trim these by just clicking on the object and sliding the head or tail toward the center.
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filzillaJun 26 '12 at 21:58

Thanks for that, I can't believe I'm having such a hard time moving one channel along to be in line with another!
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ThePowerJun 27 '12 at 10:01

I think when you click on a track in SoundForge you then need to move the mouse up or down to tell it the selection is complete before moving left or right. If you just go left or right it changes the selection instead.
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Rory Alsop♦Jun 27 '12 at 11:35

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I did check my version last night, it's a home version, "studio". It only allows for one stereo track at a time. Here's what might help, go to file, click new, check out the pop up window for track settings--better versions will allow you to create a time line with multiple tracks. Put your tracks in this multitrack timeline--then try to move them.
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filzillaJun 27 '12 at 16:34